Rovio Entertainment Ltd, previously known as Relude and Rovio Mobile, is a Finnishdeveloper, publisher, distributor of video games and is an entertainment company headquartered in Espoo, Finland.[5] The company was founded in 2003 as a mobile game development studio named Relude, and was renamed to Rovio Mobile (Finnish for pyre) in 2005.[6] The company is best known for creating the Angry Birds franchise.

In 2003, three students from Helsinki University of Technology (currently Aalto University School of Science), Niklas Hed, Jarno Väkeväinen and Kim Dikert, participated in a mobile game development competition at the Assembly demo party sponsored by Nokia and HP. A victory with a multiplayer game called King of the Cabbage World led the trio, along with Niklas Hed's cousin Mikael Hed, to set up their own company, Relude. King of the Cabbage World was sold to Sumea (now known as Sumea Studios as part of Digital Chocolate), and renamed to Mole War, which became one of the first commercial real-time multiplayer mobile games. In January 2005, Relude received its first round of investment from a business angel, and the company changed its name to Rovio Mobile.[7]

In 2009, Mikael Hed became the CEO. In December 2009, Rovio released Angry Birds, its 52nd game, a puzzle game where a bird is flung using a slingshot for the iPhone; it reached No. 1 spot in the AppleApp Store paid apps chart after six months, and remained charted for months after.[8]Angry Birds has since been downloaded over 1 billion times,[9] with paid downloads accounting for more than 25% of total downloads, making it one of the top selling games in the Apple App Store.

In March 2011, Rovio raised $42 million in venture capital funding from Accel Partners, Atomico and Felicis Ventures.[10] In July 2011, the company changed its name to Rovio Entertainment Ltd.[11] In June 2011, the company hired David Maisel to lead their 'Angry Bird' movie production.[12] By October 2011, Rovio purchased Kombo, a Helsinki-based animation company.[13] The animation studio was acquired to produce a series of short videos released in 2012.[14] In March 2012, Rovio acquired Futuremark Game Studios, the game development division of benchmarking company Futuremark for an undisclosed sum.[15]

In May 2012, Rovio announced that its game series Angry Birds had reached its one billionth download. In July 2012, Rovio announced a distribution partnership with Activision to bring the first three Angry Birds titles to video game consoles and handhelds, in a collection named Angry Birds Trilogy. The title was released in September 2012. In November 2012, Rovio released Angry Birds Star Wars, an iteration of its popular game licensed from the Star Wars original trilogy, for mobile devices and PC.[16] Rovio partnered with Activision again to port the title to video game consoles and handhelds, with it being released on those platforms in October 2013. A sequel, Angry Birds Star Wars II, based on the Star Wars prequel trilogy, was released in September 2013.

ToonsTV logo

In March 2013, Rovio launched its multi-platform ToonsTV channel starting with Angry Birds Toons.[17] As of 2013, Rovio became a video game publisher and is publishing third party games through their Rovio Stars program.[18]

In January 2014, Rovio announced that its game series Angry Birds had reached its two billionth download.[19] In addition, it was revealed that their flagship series, Angry Birds, "leaked data" to third-party companies, possibly to surveillance agencies like the NSA.[20] In retaliation, anti-NSA hackers defaced Rovio's website.[21]

In May 2014, Rovio launched a new publishing arm, Rovio LVL11, to release experimental games.[22] The first game published under Rovio LVL11 is Retry[23] and the second is Selfie Slam.[24] As of June 2014, Rovio considers themselves an entertainment company, not just a game company. This is reinforced by Rovio's merchandise and licensing business accounting for about half of their annual revenue of $216 million in 2013.[25]

In August 2014, Rovio announced that Mikael Hed would step down as CEO in January 2015 in favor of Pekka Rantala.[26] Hed remained on Rovio's board and became the chairman of Rovio Animation. In December 2014, Rovio laid off 110 employees after net profits halved in 2013 due to its recent games, Angry Birds Epic and Go!, which have not been that successful as past games.[27] After this move, Rovio closed its Tampere studio, moving those operations to its Espoo location. At the end of 2014, Rovio suffered from a 73% decrease in profit, earning only €10 million. Pekka Rantala stated that the decrease is due to the poor sales of the licensed merchandise and the by-products of Angry Birds. He also noted that "the company are unsatisfied over the result of our licensing business".[28] In August 2015, Rovio laid off 260 employees worldwide after Angry Birds toy and merchandise revenue fell by 43% during 2014.[29] In December 2015, Rantala announced that he will step down as the CEO and will be succeeded by Kati Levoranta, former chief legal officer of Rovio, in January 2016.[30]

Rovio Animation produces content for multiplatform channel ToonsTV, which is owned by Rovio. It is available in most of the Rovio apps, video-on-demand providers, smart TVs and other connected devices.[17] As of December 2014, its content was viewed more than four billion times.[31]

As of 2013, Rovio became a video game publisher and is publishing third party games through their Rovio Stars program. In this program, Rovio helps other game studios develop their game and then helps to distribute the game. The Rovio Stars games are Tiny Thief, Plunder Pirates, and Sky Punks.

Rovio released experimental games under their Rovio LVL11 publishing arm. The Rovio LVL11 games were Retry and Selfie Slam.

Retry was released worldwide in October 2014.[38] It was later removed from the App Store in 2016. In Selfie Slam the player takes a selfie and adds limbs to make an avatar, then uses the avatar to play a selection of mini-games; it was soft launched in September 2014 for iOS in selected regions.[24] In December 2015, Rovio posted on a support page that development on Selfie Slam has been discontinued and that the worldwide release was cancelled.[39]

Rovio developed 51 games, which were a combination of work-for-hire projects, published games and independently released titles, before the success of the original Angry Birds. Here is a selection of these games:[40][41]